What was once the lonely cry of the odd malcontent on the websites and phone-ins would seem this season to have become the voice of a swathe of ‘Liverpudlians’. I use the term in its loosest sense. Anti-Houllierites are now openly vicious and sweeping in their hostile condemnation of our manager’s ability to manage our football club. They may still be a minority. Nevertheless they are an extremely vocal one and appear to be increasing daily in direct proportion to the vitriol and scorn aimed in Houllier’s direction.
The upshot is the huge bank of floating voters often find themselves nodding in rueful acceptance as the tirade of abuse aimed at their manager appears to ring out – on the face of things – convincing home truths. Meanwhile, the pro-Houllierites flounder in some apparently vain attempt to find higher moral ground whence they can reconstruct their idealist levees against the rising waters of the prevailing populist tide.
What concerns me in all this is the philosophy behind such a steadfast mindset which clings so doggedly to Houllier’s undoubted shortcomings – yes the man is human – whilst wantonly dismissing his proven strengths. It seems an agenda has been established and refuses to budge.
I find myself besieged by a range of emotions.
Sure I see management mistakes being made. One would have to be blind or stupid not to have, though I do not propose here to bore you with them once again as they have already been wheeled out ad infinitum by all and sundry. Saints – and sinners alike. I would just ask just one question in this regard – are mistakes not simply part and parcel of football itself? Both on – and off – the pitch?
No, I’ll tell you what galls far more than any Houllier aberration or infamous verbal gaffe. It is the sheer volume of bland blind and ultimately destructive criticism finally winning out against its more considered counterpart. The age of the internet and phone-in experts and their panacea hypotheses on all things football management is upon us. From Western-Super-Mare to Western Samoa these football sages have taken over the asylum. Once we just had Len Griffiths from Oxton to contend with. Now we have an entire militia.
Meantime, fickleness is ousting faithfulness with a vengeance that is chilling. The demand for instant gratification has rendered patience the ox-bow lake of the new Millennium football fan. Small wonder the mindset of the witchhunt is the one that prevails and spurns any claims for saving graces.
Take Saturday as a case in point.
Houllier’s team – in spite of having to tout their wares amidst an atmosphere rarer than the Sea of Tranquility – played some terrific attacking football. Admittedly this was against an opposition of questionable spirit who allowed them time and room. Admittedly, also, it tended to emanate from several inspired individuals rather than from any total footballing pass and move strategy. Nevertheless, the performance was fine and heartening. Michael Owen and Steven Gerrard were both approaching their international class best. Milan Baros demonstrated once more his burgeoning promise even though spurning chances for fun. Djimi Traore made tackles that used to be the remit of only Mark Lawrenson. Vladimir Smicer, meanwhile, was as superb as some of us have always believed him capable of being.
And the reward bestowed upon Gerard Houllier and his team for this display?
I’ll tell you – though of course you already know. Begrudged acknowledgement at best was the order of the day. At worst an unrelenting continuation of the tirade. From fans and journalists alike. Confirmation enough, I would suggest, of the intransigence of the anti-Houllier mindset.
Little wonder amidst such parsimony of spirit and objectivity that for the first time in my own living memory Reds are finding themselves set against Reds. In forty seven years following my team I have never encountered anything remotely like this.
My own Liverpudlian education was what used to be considered orthodox. I was reared on the Boy’s Pen, then on The Kop and latterly have taken my place in the stands. I’m afraid haemorrhoids tend to have such adverse effects on you. The overriding doctrine that was bred into me during my formative years – by word, by example and by observation – was loyalty to your team, the club, its players and its manager. Cut one and the rest bled.
The fans of many clubs carried similar ideals of undying loyalty. Liverpool’s, however, were as lofty as any around. Older Evertonians will know what I mean in that respect. The fact was, a Liverpudlian was there to be counted through the proverbial thick and thin.
It seems such an ethos may now be becoming outmoded.
The seasons from 1966-67 through to 1971-72 – six in all – saw the team of Bill Shankly struggling to make an impact domestically or in Europe. Solitary League and FA Cup runners-up spots were all Shanks had to show for his management efforts during those years. Whilst there were distinct highlights during this period such as the 5-0 rout of Leeds, the 3-0 victory at Goodison and Alun Evans’s demolition of Bayern, at times the performances could be pretty unconvincing to say the least and the era was characterised by prevailing feeling of frustration at ‘our’ inability to recreate the recent glories of the mid-sixties.
Fact was, it was only when the magnificent and nigh unplayable rip-rapping style of Kevin Keegan miraculously lit our touch paper at the start of the 1972-73 season that we were suddenly transformed; graced once more by a team and a manager able to bridge the enormous gap between also-rans and true greatness.
I highlight this period not so much for the footballing comparisons with today’s Liverpool – indeed, they are remarkably similar except ironically today’s crop is far more successful and possesses more potential – but rather to contrast the response of the Liverpool fans of these respective eras to what was confronting them.
Today, we see a broad section of our fan base that simply refuses to tolerate anything less than a re-creation of the enterprising football and success of the teams of yesteryear – or should I say, rather, the received ‘perception’ via selected video and DVD clips of a constant stream of nigh perfection that seems to have implanted itself so firmly in the minds of so many fans.
In sobering contrast in the late sixties what we had was a fan-base that simply supported whatever Shanks and his largely uninspired team were able to serve up. They trusted their manager and his decisions no matter that for six successive seasons his management and the players performances continually fell short of the standards the fans desired. Sure there were moans and groans but on the whole the crowd knew instinctively their role in the proceedings.
As if to underline this role, the final home game of each of those barren seasons would take a particular pattern. It was one that was peculiar to Anfield.
As the final whistle would blow on yet another empty year and the despondent players would troop off, the entire middle section of The Kop would sweep in their many thousands towards the Lake Street exit and swarm into the Main Stand car park. There we would encamp ourselves and – with an exhuberance to replicate that of victors – sing the praises of our manager and our team until they showed themselves to receive our adulation.
In effect, we made them feel like winners even though they never were.
In 1973 after six years of such unmerited acclaim the team and manager finally rewarded the fantastic loyalty of those fans with an unprecedented League and EUFA cup double. The harvest was rich. The ensuing communion all the more intense for the loyalties that had been pledged and the ties that had been bound.
From what I read and hear I very much doubt whether such rich reward is being earned just now by many Liverpool fans beyond those magnificent ‘away’ diehards.
At the start of this season, Gerard Houllier would have cast his eyes over his playing squad. It contained a spine of at least five world rated stars of – it seemed – unquestionable pedigree – Dudek, Hyypia, Henchoz, Gerrard and Owen. It was a core talented enough to underpin a serious campaign on the major fronts. Behind them came a host of either established or rising international or Premiership class players of varying yet proven calibre that seemed eminently capable of supplementing the spine core in such an ambitious campaign – Kirkland, Hamman, Heskey, Smicer, Riise, Murphy, Baros, Carragher.
On the fringe were at least another dozen performers including summer signings, promising youngsters, ageing stars and injury returnees that for their part might perhaps provide invaluable replacements or injection of marginal ingredients at times so vital for any meaningful honours challenge. The squad did thirst for some ingenuity and craft yet, if not quite Arsenal or Man United calibre, the portents were promising at the very least. On the back of a Premiership runners-up spot it was certainly not overly presumptuous to assume the season held possibilities for the squad assembled given the odd tweak here and there.
What actually transpired is still to be fully digested. Suffice to say at this juncture that no football manager in history could have foreseen what was to overtake Gerard Houllier’s team, namely the collapse from anything like acceptable form of four of his top class spine of five – Henchoz being the sole exception to the trend – nor the corresponding struggles of so many of his second line of first teamers.
The team’s bright start – results-wise rather than performance-wise I hasten to add – masked a dearth of acceptable performance right through the team. With the exception of the aforementioned Henchoz, Carragher, Murphy and Baros – when he was played – the malaise became universal. The inevitable collapse soon materialised. When players are simply not performing it matters very little what tactical innovations a manager deploys. Anyone who has played football at any competitive level will know that even if just a few of your best players are not doing it then any team has got pretty grave problems. When you’re talking of virtually an entire team you can simply forget about any notions of success.
The upshot is that for virtually six months of this season Gerard Houllier has had to contend with the nucleus of his team playing like carthorses, donkeys and/or nervous wrecks. In most instances the reasons behind such form dips would seem to have been outside of the manager’s control. Despite this – and a degree of loyalty to his non-performers that even the most diehard fan can only dream of – he has lifted a cup and somehow has us still in outside contention for a Champions League position.
What Houllier has achieved amidst such adversity and playing paucity is, frankly, rather more than commendable. Rather than being slated for our virtual disintegration it is clear to anybody not harbouring a secret agenda of dislike for the Frenchman that Gerard Houllier is, in fact, deserving of our gratitude for managing somehow to restore a modicum of respectability and equilibrium to a bunch of players and a team that for all intents and purposes was shot to pieces by a collective mental and functional breakdown.
For those of you who still doubt the validity of Houllier’s achievement in this regard, I present you with this hypothetical scenario.
Imagine Bob Paisley in the late seventies/early eighties faced with a sustained loss of form from four of his five world class performers – Clemence or Grobbelaar, Hansen, Souness and Dalglish. Imagine further that Ray Kennedy, Phil Neal and Terry MacDermott also decided to go on a similar lengthy form sabbatical.
I put it to you that even the infallible Bob Paisley might well have struggled to cope with such a situation. I also feel he might well have struggled in any post-match dialogue to put together some cogent explanations for what was taking place without appearing like the befuddled skipper of some rudderless ship. I put it to you also that the history of Liverpool Football Club would be significantly less starry-eyed than it is now. Finally, I put it to you that we would have a significantly pruned-down following of glory-hunting fickle bastards that masquerade as supporters than we do currently.
By the end of this season Gerard Houllier will have completed four seasons at the helm of our beloved football club. In that time we have witnessed a quite radical revamping of shall we say the ‘fat cat/soft underbelly’ regime that had gripped the entire club in the years preceeding his accession. The results of his tenure to date have not been without their downsides and their pitfalls. He will be the first to admit privately I’m sure that our football so far during his reign has hardly set the world alight.
Nevertheless, it is still early days for such a long term overhaul and whilst steering the club towards those elusive twin pinnacles of success and attractive football, Houllier has managed to sneak four major – if not THE major – trophies.
When viewed in such context it is churlish in the extreme to even remotely castigate such a man.
Newspaper and media hacks, including nowadays many ex-Reds, are fond of using the majesty of past Liverpool teams as some stick of righteous indignation with which to beat the manager and his cautious approach. Nothing like the sublime style and panache of old, runs the gist.
Well, as someone who has devoured every single newspaper report on every major game in which Liverpool Football Club have been involved over these past forty years let me provide some real home truths. Let me assure both the hacks and ex-players – together with any fans who might be tempted to buy such shite – that nothing has changed in all those years. This club never received its rightful acclaim back then. Just as now, the media back then saw its role as being to put down Liverpool or its incumbent manager. The detail may have changed but the story remains the same. Paranoia this is not. Factual it is.
The difference to now, of course, was that back then everyone Red was in it together. Like one huge Red family, Liverpudlians from the lowliest to the most exulted presented a united front. Some might indeed refer to it as a siege mentality. Whatever, the principle was similar to that which has had to serve the city of Liverpool itself in time of its own copious adversities. The words of the spendidly defiant ‘The Reds are coming up the hill’ define the attitude perfectly –
‘They all laugh at us,
They all mock at us ,
‘ They all say our days are numbered,
‘ Born to be a Scouser…
And today?
Well, I have to say I am ashamed of those Reds who join in with this insidious undermining of the current set-up. Imperfect it may be. Misguided, too, at times. Yet, above everything else, it is as committed to the Red cause as staunchly and as tenaciously as any Red has ever been. And that is what counts more than anything else.
Those who are currently running Liverpool Football Club love this club as much as any of us. Eventually by trial and error and by everybody pulling in one direction – down that path first trodden by Shankly and Paisley – this club may well get back to the position in football that it so craves and once occupied before tragedy contrived to snatch it away. There can be no assurances. Any that have been given are but empty words because life – and football – do not and cannot work like that. Nevertheless, it is only by continuity, loyalty and uniting behind capable people committed to a cause that you ever stand a chance of achieving anything.
Those Reds currently brandishing the callous words of the media to degrade the capabilities and achievements of the current regime should think rather more deeply about the ethos to which they are allying themselves for it has nothing whatsoever to do with Liverpool Football Club or being a Liverpudlian. Of that I can assure them.